VOICES
Tiptoeing Toward Democracy
KIGALI, RWANDA
When Faustin Twagiramungu stepped
off the plane at Kigali International Airport, ending eight years
of self-imposed exile in Belgium, he expected a huge crowd. Instead,
the former prime minister was greeted by a small knot of people,
all of whom, he learned later, had heard of his arrival only by
word of mouth. The state-controlled media had neglected to mention,
much less cover, his return. It took three more days, in fact,
before Twagiramungu got any airtime at all — a two-minute
interview — on Rwandan TV.
Twagiramungu is one of four candidates running in Rwanda's first real presidential election. Coming nearly ten years after a massacre that pitted Hutu against Tutsi and left 800,000 dead, this race has taken on epic proportions. It will not be just a polling, but an acknowledgement that the genocide is behind them.
As a former White House correspondent covering this historic election, my expectations were high. I envisioned posters festooning every storefront. Banners on government buildings. Nonstop coverage on radio and TV. Maybe even some televised debates. Instead, I am witnessing a cautious attempt at a presidential campaign with an even more cautious contingent of local journalists paddling in its wake.
When the August 25 election was first announced, Rwandans worried aloud that the ethnic tensions between Hutu and Tutsi would reignite. Twagiramungu, after all, is a Hutu; the incumbent, Paul Kagame, is a Tutsi. It was partly out of this concern that press coverage of the race has been carefully circumscribed. Each candidate is supposed to get thirty minutes of prime-time TV coverage and two hours of radio coverage a week. Newspapers are supposed to provide equal coverage. Those measures have been less than a total success.
President Kagame arrives at a recent campaign event in something that looks like a popemobile - an open-air car fitted with a guardrail he can hang onto. Kagame staffers jog alongside the car wearing black baseball caps and black tennis shirts emblazoned with the president's name. Several of the journalists, from the state-run Radio Rwanda and Television Rwandaise, are also sporting the Kagame uniform. That night, typically, Kagame's rally is the lead item on government-run television news — a long piece that focuses mostly on the happy crowds. It is followed by a Kagame commercial: A smiling, triumphant-looking Kagame. Dancing Rwandans in Vote Kagame T-shirts. A chorus of African singers belting out "Kagame Paul Tuzamutora" — Paul Kagame, we shall vote for him. Then the thrumming of a traditional African drum.
For Faustin Twagiramungu, there is not even a van. With few campaign resources, he has taken to asking those who have cars to give him a ride to campaign venues. His first public rally, in early August, attracts a few thousand people. Energy snakes out of the candidate like heat waves; yet Twagiramungu, too, does little beyond throwing smiles to the crowd. Despite the guidelines for equal coverage, his rally gets just a quick mention on the evening newscast.
The role of the media in igniting ethnic hatred before and during the genocide was bound to cast a pall on any coverage of the race. As the candidates campaign around the country, three founders of Radio Television Libre Mille Collines, are being tried by a U.N. war-crimes tribunal for fomenting genocide. The radio station's broadcasts had called for members of the Hutu majority to kill the Tutsi minority. "Do your work!" the station's announcer had said. "The graves are not yet full." The calls for murder ended when then General Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front army marched on Kigali. He has been in power ever since.
With that media history, is isn't hard to understand why free and unfettered access to candidates and aggressive campaign reporting has been a nonstarter here. There is still a sullen, raw, post-genocide mood in Rwanda. The simmering fear that these elections could reopen the wounds of 1994 — the same fear that prompted the worthy attempts at equal time — has also gone a long way toward encouraging self-censorship.
The Rwandan press has failed to mention explicitly, for example, that top opposition candidate Twagiramungu is a Hutu and Kagame is Tutsi. "The election is an experiment," said a Kagame staffer who declined to be further identified. "This is supposed to help us build confidence that we can live together. So we have put in place a measured democracy."
And measured coverage to go with it.
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